Volvo’s Self-Driving Cars Will Max Out at 43 MPH

They won't break any speed records, but the cars could be the first driverless vehicles available to the public

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Harold Cunningham / Getty Images

Volvo is aiming to be the first car maker to bring self-driving vehicles to the public. To do so, it has partnered with Sweden to bring 100 self-driving Volvos to the streets of its second-largest city, Gothenburg.

“We aren’t the world’s biggest country, we aren’t the world’s largest car maker, but we make up for that by being smarter and working together in a simpler way,” Volvo Cars chief executive Haakan Samuelsson said at a news conference in Stockholm on Monday announcing its “Drive Me” program.

The project has a budget of $76.2 million and will begin in 2014. The cars — which use a set of cameras, GPS data and motion sensors to avoid collisions — are set to have a maximum speed of 43.5 miles per hour. By comparison, Nissan plans to have its self-driving models completed by 2020.

[France 24]